Description

2016 AAUP Public and Secondary School Library Selection, Outstanding Rating

Hundreds of Palestinian villages were left empty across Israel when their residents became refugees after the 1948 war, their lands and property confiscated. Most of the villages were razed by the new State of Israel, but in dozens of others, communities of Jews were settled—many refugees in their own right. The state embarked on a systematic effort of renaming and remaking the landscape, and the Arab presence was all but erased from official maps and histories. Israelis are familiar with the ruins, terraces, and orchards that mark these sites today—almost half are located within tourist areas or national parks—but public descriptions rarely acknowledge that Arab communities existed there within living memory or describe how they came to be depopulated. Using official archives, kibbutz publications, and visits to the former village sites, Noga Kadman has reconstructed this history of erasure for all 418 depopulated villages.

Author Bio

Noga Kadman is a researcher and licensed tour guide whose main interest is to explore the encounter between Israelis and the Palestinian presence in the landscape and history of the country. She is co-editor of Once Upon a Land: A Tour Guide to Depopulated Palestinian Villages and Towns (in Hebrew and Arabic).

Reviews

“This remarkable book examines how the issue of the Palestinian villages whose inhabitants were expelled in 1948 has evolved in Israeli consciousness. Kadman looks at official Israeli discourse, kibbutz and moshav diaries and records, and the maps produced by the Israeli state to show in disturbing detail how the dispossession of the population of over 400 villages, most of which have since been destroyed, has been largely eliminated from the imaginary of most Israelis.”
— Rashid Khalidi

“Poignant, sensitive, and compassionate, Kadman’s deeply-informed inquiry exposes graphically the process of 'demographic Judaization' of Palestine, in physical reality and cultural comprehension. It is an invaluable contribution, particularly at a moment of reflection and reassessment that might offer some hope of escape from a further plunge into darknes--if there is an honest and courageous engagement with what has been done and why, and how some measure of healing might yet emerge.”
— Noam Chomsky

“A very valuable contribution to existing scholarship. While many scholars have referred to the denial of the existence of a thriving Palestinian society before 1948 in Israeli culture, [Kadman] uncovers the 'black box' of the discourse of denial and eloquently demonstrates some major mechanisms of its production. . . . [A]ccessible to readers beyond the field of Palestine and Israel studies, including a general audience beyond academic circles.”
— Tamir Sorek, University of Florida

“An excellent, original, and important work [that] will immediately become a textbook for courses in the US and elsewhere.”
— Ariella Azoulay, Brown University

Customer Reviews

Table of Contents

Foreword by Oren YiftachelAcknowledgmentsNote on TransliterationList of AbbreviationsList of Foreign TermsIntroduction1. Depopulation, Demolition, and Repopulation of the Village Sites2. National Identity, National Conflict, Space, and Memory3. The Depopulated Villages as Viewed by Jewish Residents4. Naming and Mapping the Depopulated Village Sites5. Depopulated Villages in Tourist and Recreational SitesConclusion: The Remains of the Past, A Look Toward the Future Appendix A: Maps and Lists of the Depopulated Palestinian VillagesAppendix B: Official Names Given to Depopulated Palestinian Villages by the Government Names CommitteeAppendix C: Mapping the Depopulated Palestinian Villages over the DecadesNotesBibliographyIndex